Existing 2D/3D imagers use natural light, flash light, artificial lighting, infrared illuminators, or pulsed laser illuminators emitting comparatively long (nanosecond) pulses. Those illuminators send light to the expected targets. A tiny fraction of this light is reflected towards the sensor part of the imager. 2D imagers do not suffer from intrinsic speed limitations, but only sensitivity limits. 3D sensors have significant speed limits due to the round-trip time of the emitted light between the imager and the target. This is aggravated by the significant settling time (dead time) required by most 3D sensors.
For example, time-of-flight (ToF) imagers frequently use many thousands of pulses separated by more than the ToF to image a single 3D scene. This sets stringent limitations to the achievable frame rate and thus also to the capability of imaging moving targets.
Existing imagers use fixed direction optics or motorized moving optical systems to acquire 2D/3D data of a scene. The very high resolution of some sensors, such as the 120 megapixels of the latest Canon CCD, seems to be a powerful imaging solution, but even the best existing sensors, even possibly acting in groups, could not actually provide a high resolution for 2D/3D scenes in a wide range of viewing directions and distances.
The inventors have found that imagers which are only electronically controlled appear to be unable to attain such a result. They have designed a rotating optical device for detailed imaging of scenes.
However, the lifetime of existing motorized optics is actually limited to a few hundred thousand cycles of movements. Therefore, continuous movements are impossible due to mechanical wear.